The reason sex evolved seems so obvious to me that upon hearing that there is no consensus, I fear I must be missing something.
Asexual reproduction leads to organisms that can only adapt to changing environments as quickly as random mutation allows. And environments change much more quickly than that, I think. Sexual reproduction leads to a much greater diversity of individuals, such that there is a much higher probability that at least a few members of a "species" (I use scare quotes because a species is just an arbitrary snapshot in time) will survive even if the environment changes quickly. On Nov 5, 2015 6:55 PM, "Russell Standish" <[email protected]> wrote: > On Thu, Nov 05, 2015 at 09:46:20AM +0100, Bruno Marchal wrote: > > evolution of life. I think we do have evidence that with sex, the > > evolution of species has been accelerated. > > > > I don't think that is true, but even if it were, it doesn't explain > why sex accelerates the evolution of species. If anything, the reverse > is to be expected, because interchange of genetic material acts as a > brake on regular genetic drift due to mutation. Indeed, because of > sex, sympatric speciation was widely considered impossible, although > it appears that nobody told Nature that! > > From what I see, the role and function of sex is still a mystery, > although there have been a number of plausible explanations that have > been put forward that have yet to be tested to the scientific > community's satisfaction. > > -- > > > ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- > Prof Russell Standish Phone 0425 253119 (mobile) > Principal, High Performance Coders > Visiting Professor of Mathematics [email protected] > University of New South Wales http://www.hpcoders.com.au > > ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- > > -- > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups > "Everything List" group. > To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an > email to [email protected]. > To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. > Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. > For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout. > -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
